


Not Exactly Diamonds and Toads

by JanLevine



Category: Enchanted Forest Chronicles - Patricia Wrede
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-17
Updated: 2015-12-17
Packaged: 2018-05-07 08:03:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5449349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JanLevine/pseuds/JanLevine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cimorene's scheduled tea with Morwen is delayed by the consequences of a fairy godmother's annoyance. Contains marbles, mysterious ingredients, many cats, and -- eventually -- tea.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Exactly Diamonds and Toads

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Artifactrix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artifactrix/gifts).



### 1\. In Which Cimorene Visits Friends as Someone Else Departs

The transportation spell gently deposited Cimorene a short distance from Morwen and Telemain’s house, and she looked around. She had been here a few times since their marriage, and things were still settling down. Not surprisingly, neither Morwen nor Telemain had wanted to give up their perfectly good homes, so—with a bit of help from Mendanbar—they had instead combined them; Morwen’s house now had an attached tower. Unfortunately, the relocation had not quite accounted for all of Morwen’s garden—possibly, Mendanbar had said grumpily, because Telemain insisted on being involved in the procedure—but a certain amount of replanting seemed to have been done. The gold “NONE OF THIS NONSENSE, PLEASE” was still over the door of the house, but nothing yet over the separate door to Telemain’s tower. There had been discussion of what might be appropriate, but so far no decision had been reached. Privately, Morwen had told Cimorene that everything he’d come up with would be an entire paragraph, not one simple line, and she’d refused to paint anything that small.

There were several cats in sight, but only one on the path. “Hello, Miss Eliza,” she said. “How are you?” Miss Eliza rubbed against her leg and allowed Cimorene to scratch her head, then sat herself in front of Cimorene, shook her head, and trotted off. Cimorene heard a distant crash, then some yelling, and then the door flew open and a young woman with a bandaged elbow ran out of the house. She narrowly missed barging into Cimorene, threw a hurried “Excuse me” over her shoulder, and hurried on into the forest, and was soon out of sight.

Cimorene stood at the open doorway and called in. “Is it safe to come in?” Over the years, she’d learned just how dangerous accidental magic could be, and she didn’t want to be the one who set anything off.

“I think so,” came Morwen’s voice. “But watch out for the marbles.”

### 2\. In Which Explanations Are Provided, Spell Ingredients Are Collected, and the Cats Have a Snack

Marbles? Cimorene shuffled in carefully; she knew from experience just how easy it was to trip over small round objects. Sure enough, there were marbles all over the floor, though Morwen was quickly sweeping them into a container. Witchcraft could be very useful for minor household things, Cimorene reflected—when the marbles went into the container, they _stayed_ there, instead of rolling out again the way they normally would. On the table, she notice a jumble of small bottles and other objects at one end. It looked less tidy than Morwen’s usual spick-and-span housekeeping.

“Hello, Morwen, Telemain. What just happened? I heard a loud noise. And who was that woman who nearly ran me over?”

Morwen scowled. “I wish she’d stuck around a bit longer, but our business really was done. Her name is Istilene, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that she met an old lady at a well, and the old lady asked her for water. She gave her some water, but apparently wasn’t very polite about it. And the old lady was really a fairy godmother—the type who likes to hand out rewards and punishments of the coming-out-of-the-mouth kind.”

Cimorene shuddered. “I remember hearing about that. A friend of Princess Alianora’s met someone like her, and now their house is awash in diamonds and rose petals. Even as a reward, it doesn’t sound very pleasant.”

“No, and Istilene didn’t get a reward, though she didn’t get a punishment, either. If she’d refused, she would have toads and vipers coming out of her mouth every time she talked. If she’d obeyed politely, she probably would have had diamonds and roses. But because it was somewhere in the middle, what she got was marbles. Not particularly disgusting, but dangerous if you slip on them. She tried to find the old lady again to apologize, but after a month of looking—and dropping marbles all over the place—she came to Telemain and me to see if we could do anything.”

That explained the bandaged elbow, Cimorene supposed. It’s hard to be careful about marbles _all_ the time if they keep falling out of your mouth whenever you talk. She realized she hadn’t heard anything from Telemain, which was unusual, to say the least. He was standing over in the corner, conspicuously out of the way of Morwen and her broom. She looked at him, and raised an eyebrow.

“Be careful!” warned Morwen.

He said, “The discriminatory field linked to the creation net determined that she was neither deserving of reward or punishment, but nevertheless was required to produce an output.” And as he said that, three rocks and a small fish—an anchovy, she thought—fell out of his mouth. Cimorene didn’t get a chance to investigate the fish, because three cats were upon it first.

“That’s what I just said,” Morwen said.

“I was experimenting,” said Telemain, as a small corked bottle fell out of his mouth this time. He caught it, smiled, and handed it to Morwen.

“Powdered hens’ teeth,” she said. “Very useful for some spells. And rare.” She added it to a small pile of similar items.

“Indeed,” said Cimorene. “I remember just how much trouble I had finding some for that fire protection spell. So I gather you managed to remove the spell from Istilene?”

“Not so much removed as transferred,” said Morwen. “Into Telemain. That wasn’t what we intended, of course. The idea was to have it go into a crystal ball.” She pointed to the one in the middle of the table that Cimorene had assumed was just witchly decoration. “After all, a crystal ball is somewhat like a giant marble, so we thought there would be some sympathy that would attract it. Telemain wanted to study it, because he hasn’t had much of a chance to study fairy-godmother magic. Of course he did.” She shook her head at Telemain, then smiled fondly. 

“Apparently—possibly because of the nature of fairy-godmother magic—the spell can only transfer into something animate. It took us a few minutes to figure out what had happened. In any case, the spell is off Istilene, so let her go with a reminder that many old women in the Enchanted Forest aren’t what they seem, and it is worthwhile to be polite as well as obedient to their requests.”

“So the spell is now on Telemain?” said Cimorene. “But why rocks and ingredients? And _fish_?”

“Well, he’s not a princess. And the spell’s last format had been in a rather neutral format, so it had a certain amount of choice. The spell seems to have a certain amount of intelligence. If Telemain uses technical terminology and the only people around are ones who speak the same jargon—like me, before you arrived—then something useful falls out of his mouth. Or, of course, if he uses everyday speech. So far, we have a phoenix feather, and small amounts of toad wallop, and mountain root, plus a bunch of other things we haven’t had time to identify.” She pointed at the jumble of bottles and other items at the side of the table. “But that’s going to have to wait until the current problem is taken care of. Your arrival was the confirmation. When he used magician’s jargon in front of Istilene and then you—and earlier, when we were alone and he used a term I was unfamiliar with—he got something mildly unpleasant and not useful, like rocks and fish.”

There was a protest from several cats, who clearly thought that fish were very useful indeed. Which made her curious about another thing. “Does the spell pay attention to whether or not cats understand?” asked Cimorene. 

“Since the cats are my familiars, their understanding is tied to mine, I think.”

That made sense. Cimorene knew enough about cats to guess that if they didn’t understand something Telemain said, it was only because they didn’t care to bother. 

### 3\. In Which Some Unpleasant Items Prove Surprisingly Useful

Cimorene considered. “So now you want to transfer the spell from Telemain to someone—or something—else, right? Because everything you said sounds like you can’t just make it go into thin air. But what animate thing can you put it in?” She didn’t dare look around at the cats.

Morwen nodded, smiling. “You understand the theory. Our plan is to give it somewhere else to go. Luckily, Telemain had a homunculus around, though I have no idea why.”

Telemain said, after what was clearly a pause to organize his words, “I had intended to use it as a test subject for certain types of offensive spells. I didn’t want to hurt anyone by experimenting on live subjects until I was sure I knew what the results would be.” As he spoke, a small bottle of bright pink powder, a dragon scale, and a rock dropped from his mouth. He grimaced, presumably at the taste, then handed them to Morwen to examine.

Cimorene said, “I understood that all perfectly. Why would he get a rock?”

“It’s not a plain rock,” said Morwen. “That’s a thunderstone. Very useful. And the powder”—she uncapped the bottle, sniffed carefully, and capped it again—“appears to be fairy dust. I’m not entirely sure about the ethics of that, since it’s usually obtained by evil magicians who get it by grinding up fairy wings.”

“Eeyuw!” exclaimed Cimorene. “I hope it was just magically conjured. Or that it’s something else. What can you use it for? Anything that normal people would want to?”

“Actually, it can be used both for making people sick—thus the evil magicians—and for healing them. Healing in general, I mean, not just people who’ve been made sick by magical means. But we’re getting off the subject.”

Telemain nodded vigorously, and put an object that looked like a large doll on the table. It was partly wrapped in a white cloth, and it _squirmed_ as it lay there. Cimorene felt vaguely queasy looking at it, but didn’t look away. “Anything I should be doing?” she asked. “Or should I wait outside?”

“You can stay if you like,” said Morwen. “But sit over there”—she pointed to a chair in the corner—“and don’t say a word. If you did, _you_ might end up with the spell on you.”

Cimorene sat, watched, and said nothing as Morwen bustled around Telemain and the homunculus. Telemain made a few comments that Cimorene was sure she wouldn’t have understood even if she’d heard them clearly, and the cats took care of the resulting fish, deftly avoiding the accompanying shower of rocks.

After a few minutes, Morwen and Telemain chanted something together, and looked expectant. As far as Cimorene could tell, nothing happened. “Did it work?” she asked.

“It appears not,” said Telemain. “Perhaps I should practice speaking plainly some more while you’re here. At least that way I could get some useful items,” he said as he deftly caught two small bottles and a wobbly thing that Cimorene didn’t recognize, absently adding them to the pile.

“Useful items _and_ not annoying people. I’m not the only one it bothers, you know,” said Cimorene with a bit more acid in her voice than she’d intended.

Telemain looked genuinely abashed. “I’m sorry. It’s just sometimes easier to say exactly what I mean. I don’t intend to speak over people. It’s just that I’m interested in so many things.”

“I know,” said Cimorene gently. But if you’re not being understood by the people you’re talking to, there’s not much point.

Telemain turned to Morwen. “Maybe that’s why the transfer spell didn’t work. Perhaps we need to add...” he paused to think “...a communications _and_ understanding component.”

He collected the items generated by the recent conversation, added it to the pile, and made some notations on a sheet of paper. Morwen studied them, nodded, and then said, “Let’s try it again.”

This time, after the chanting, there was a soundless flash, and the homunculus gave a large twitch. Morwen let out a long breath. “That should have done it. Telemain, give it a test.”

“Cimorene, I’m very happy to see you,” he said, then paused. No rocks, fish, or mysterious ingredients came out of his mouth. The cats looked disappointed. “And the process worked as expected.”

“Good!” said Morwen. “Maybe it’ll even work as a lesson in politeness.”

Telemain managed to look slightly put-upon, but nodded. Then he bundled up the homunculus and headed for his tower, saying “I have some more experiments to run. I’m going to try Vendak’s Analysis—” He paused, looked at Cimorene, and continued, “I’m going to see what I can discover about the spell by doing tests on the homunculus. I’ll see you later this evening.” He kissed Morwen, and left.

“Fine,” Morwen said to his retreating back. And to Cimorene, “Well, that was a bit of an afternoon’s excitement. How about some tea?”

And tea they had, with scones with clotted cream and jam, cucumber sandwiches, and ginger cake.

### 4\. In Which Telemain Has Another Brilliant Idea, At Least By His Standards

Just as they were becoming nicely replete, Telemain came running into the room, having clearly hustled down from his tower.

“I can do it!” he exclaimed. 

“Do what?” chorused Morwen and Cimorene.

“I can transfer the spell again! It’s a shame to waste something so useful. Think of all the ingredients we got, just in the time it was on me. I mean, fairy wings! Phoenix feather! If I could just pay someone else to cope with it and collect the results.”

He paused for a minute, thinking, then started again before Cimorene and Morwen could open their mouths. “Do you suppose Killer the rabbit would be willing? He’s already shown that he’s receptive to spellwork, and I could pay him in produce from the garden. Of course, I’d have to be careful he doesn’t attract any other spells; combinations at this stage would be unpredictable...” He wandered off again, muttering to himself.

“More cake, Cimorene?” asked Morwen.

“Yes, please,” she replied.

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to June Bauer, my beta reader.


End file.
